Meanings
- uncountableengineeringThe act of claiming a project or idea for oneself, discouraging others from working on it, but then never finishing it.
Another way that executives waste employees' time, slow the work and add to their own burdens is by "cookie licking," a term inspired by sneaky children who lick cookies to deter others from eating them.
2018 August 12, Robert I. Sutton, “How Bosses Waste Their Employees’ Time”, in The Wall Street Journal, New York, N.Y.: Dow Jones & Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Aug 20233 more examples
Suppose there is a list of items to be done, say, tasks or projects or topics for investigation. Somebody signals interest in a particular project, thereby making it unavailable for others to work on. If the person never actually starts working on the project, then that person is accused of engaging in cookie licking.
2009 December 1, Raymond Chen, “Microspeak: Cookie licking”, in The Old New Thing, archived from the original on 02 Oct 2024Allow people to act out in those ways, and you're guaranteeing that more counterproductive cookie-licking ways will emerge as you promote talent through the ranks. Left unchecked, advanced cookie-licking could include the following organizational poison: […]
2011 October 10, Kris Dunn, “Attack of the Cookie-Lickers”, in CFO, archived from the original on 01 Mar 2024Several operations executives told me they were embarrassed by that stunt (which seven years later, had progressed no further than private tests). They used an old internal Microsoft term to describe it: "cookie licking," or the act of claiming to do something before you actually do it, in order to capture notoriety and prevent others from following.
2021, Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, New York, N.Y. […]: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 233
Cite this entry
cookie licking. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cookie%20licking
“cookie licking.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cookie%20licking. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cookie licking,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cookie%20licking.
Source: cookie licking on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.